Education is a priceless legacy of fundamental importance to the individual and society.No nation can make any progress without education. This is a fact recognized everywhere in the world. Even a country as great as the United States of America had to be reminded of this, at the turn of the 1960s when President John F. Kennedy told Americans that “our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education”.
The education system of Nigeria has faced a lot of challenges and operational bias. Today, many of our primary,secondary and tertiary institutions are shadows of their old selves.
v Buildings poorly maintained,
v Classes and lecture halls are overcrowded,
v Science practicals are conducted only a few weeks to Senior School CertificateExamination, just to prepare students for the examination practicals,
v School libraries are poor; students hardly read outside their scanty notes as readingculture is no more,
v Student slack discipline;
v Teachers make learning uninteresting since many of them are so poorly prepared that theydo not know the subject better than the students they teach,
v No electricity and water supply in most schools,
v No sporting facilities,
v Lawlessness,
v Cultism,
v Truancy,
v Absenteeism,
v Examination malpractice etc.
Nigeria at 51 cannot boast of sound and qualitative education. A review of Nigeria’s position in the ranking of 100 top African Universities showed that only five out of the one hundred and five Nigerian Universities came up among Africa’s top 100. Our best is Africa’s 57th. How good is this for a nation that considers herself as the giant of Africa?
How do you measure the quality of education? It is by assessing the quality of the graduates who pass through such education. Our society is saturated with certificates that cannot be defended by their owners. Most graduates are not productive, because their foundation is faulty and built on cheating.
Ina developing country such as ours, we should not be satisfied with the present system of education, as education is closely related with the development of society. There should be a re-examination of the system and definite steps taken to overhaul it.
In Nigeria today a very disturbing and worrisome problem is the declining quality of teachers due to decline in the quality of teacher training. You will agree with me that hardly any learning is taking place in most of our primary schools today across the country because hardly is any teaching being done at that level. Many primary school teachers simply do not know what to teach because they are not more literate than the pupils they are supposed to teach. A child who come under the undesirable influence of an incompetent teacher can have his entire school ruined and may even grow to hate books, teachers and the school.
Let us look at some very serious common mistakes made by some teachers. A teacher was once asked, what is your qualification?She replied, “MCE” instead of “NCE”. She was asked to give the full meaning of“NCE”, she replied, “Natural Certificate in Education” instead of “Nigeria Certificate in Education”. Another teacher was asked, “What do you do for a living”? She replied, “I teaches”. “I am a teacher student”. In the course of teaching, many make serious mistakes: “Jesus turned water into drink”. Another,teaching the alphabets said with all conviction: Big letter “A”, small letter“A”, instead of capital letter “A” and small letter “a”. Many mix up small letters and capital letters when writing. Most of the primary school teachers pronounce ‘X’ as “ox” or “us”.
These days, most teachers abuse the use of abbreviations. For example, they write. C.R.S instead of the full meaning,Christian Religious Studies. When teachers are asked to write the full word, on the chalkboard, they write Christian Religion Study”. Others wrote “Integrated Science”, instead of “Integrated Science”.
The following are common spelling errors made by teachers during teaching practice exercise:
ü It is good for us to be jelous/jealous.
ü Satify/ Satisfy.
ü Disrepect/ Disrespect.
ü Ballons/ Balloons.
ü Enoironment/ Environment.
ü Healt/ Health.
ü Flat/ Float.
ü Nuresry/ Nursery.
ü Easther/ Esther.
ü Prophesy/ Prophesied.
ü Shepard/ Shepherd.
ü Compititor/ Competitor.
I would like to invite the attention of education planners and administrators,the Colleges of Education, Faculties of Education, Institutes of Education,National Teachers’ Institute among others who provide prospective teachers with the required professional training and skill necessary for their assignment, to address the decline in the quality of teacher preparation. In the past few years, Nigeria’s policymakers have made significant changes designed to produce Nigeria’s least experienced and least qualified teachers. In most European and Asian countries,teacher are prepared in both content and pedagogy before they are allowed to enter the classroom.
Unfortunately however, Nigeria has her own unique ways of preparing teachers with the proliferation of educational institutions in the country in recent times,coupled with the introduction of part-time, weekend and sandwich programmes characterized by the lowering of entry qualification into schools, the performance of products from most of the institutions began to fall below expectation.
The National Teachers Institute [NTI] which is the present basic foundation of Teacher education in Nigeria,is a useless and hopeless programme. This programme has succeeded in training an army of poorly trained and uncertificated teachers who teach in the primary schools – the foundation of education. As a proprietress of a school, we are the end users of these products. We are in a better position to assess these products. Most of them cannot write or speak correct English. To buttress this statement, I remembered an incidence where T.C II products of the NTI were tested with Primary Six past question papers during an employment interview and they performed so poorly to the extent that only few were able to score up to 20%. These are the crop of teachers that are recruited by the Local Government Chairman to teach in primary schools. This generation of children are in trouble.
The question I always ask is, what has this generation of children done to deserve this kind of epileptic education that they are receiving today? As educators,we must reverse the current trends in which under-qualified teachers enter the classroom. A child who come under the undesirable influence of an incompetent teacher can have his entire school career ruined and may even grow to hate books, teachers and the school.
Excellent teachers produce excellent students and, ultimately, an excellent society. On the other hand, poor teachers produce poor students and ultimately, a poor society. The place of the teacher in the society is thus very unique and highly strategic calling for only the highest and the best in them. Teachers hold the key to positive change in any society. As moulders of character and shapers of attitudes, skills and competencies, they are the greatest agents of change. For this reason any investment in teacher training and retraining is an investment well made.
I four education is to achieve the national objectives as stated in the National Policy on Nigeria,a well-trained, qualified, efficient, satisfied and dedicated crop of teachers is absolutely essential. There is urgent need for the President to call retired teachers, all Nigeria Conference of Principals of Secondary Schools [ANCOPSS] and retired education administrators to look at our current teacher preparation policies and programmes.
The institutions that prepare teachers must re-examine their roles and try to improve the quality of the existing teaching force. Most of the lecturers preparing teachers in the various Colleges of Education and Faculties of Education in our Universities are not trained teachers. You do not give what you do not have. There is a lot of difference between a trained graduate teacher and untrained graduate teacher. For instance, some teachers teaching in Colleges of Education do not possess a teaching qualification. One wonders what an untrained teacher would give out to train a teacher. A good teacher training programme is the key to accomplishment of educational goals. The supply and training of teachers lies at the very heart of the educational process in Nigeria. The Christian Missionaries laid the foundations for teacher training in Nigeria. We must therefore, look to the past and better the future. Improved student learning will take place only when teachers have access to the necessary training, knowledge, skills, working conditions and material resources. For them to have the tools they need, major changes must be made. Excellent teachers produce excellent students and, ultimately, an excellent society. On the other hand, poor teachers produce poor students and, ultimately a poor society.The place of the teacher in society is thus very unique and highly strategic calling for only the highest and the best in them.
It is common knowledge that teachers of old are better and more dedicated to the calling than teachers of today. This has been traced to the type of training which they had. If this is so, then it can be concluded that teacher training programmes of the past produced better teachers than present –day teacher training programmes are producing. Therefore, to salvage the situation, it is necessary to look to the past and use it to enrich the present. In this connection, it is important to note the following for consideration.
The scrapping of the conventional Teachers Training Colleges in Nigeria where teachers were well groomed in the principles and practice of Education does not appear to be expedient. The TC II programmes used to be the basic foundation of Teacher Education in Nigeria. The effect of scrapping them has been the lack of thoroughness and depth which characterize the teaching practice today. There is need to consider its re – introduction into the Senior Secondary School system as was originally conceived of the 6-3-3-4system, so that our children from the Junior Secondary School can be streamed into the Senior Secondary School [Teacher Education]. Thereafter, they can progress into the Colleges of Education as initially envisaged.
There is also very urgent need to look critically at the current practice of recruitment and engagement of teachers in the entire country, with a view to evolving policies to regularize it. At the moment, the Local Government Education Secretaries [LGEA] and state UBE Boards recruit as many NCE and University graduates as they can,irrespective of their adequacy or otherwise for the job of teaching at the Primary or Junior Secondary levels. Many of these are deployed to primary schools as Headmasters, with no experience whatsoever in primary education and its requirements. As a result, the situation in many primary schools is simply depressing as there is a general laissez-faire attitude in primary schools.There is no professional and administrative leadership, and teachers have no appropriate teaching skills. So everyone does whatever he likes, and no learning is taking place. Councils should therefore consider a policy that will remove all NCE or University graduates with no TC II and experience in teaching at the primary school level from the primary school system. Those of them who specialize in Primary Education with no TC II or cognate experience may be tolerated.
This point to the need for teacher recruitment to be properly guided by experienced professionals, as a mater of policy. To facilitate this, appointments into the various education agencies should be guided exclusively by professional, rather than political,considerations. Besides, all recruitment exercises should be carried out with State Ministries of Education represented in the recruitment panels as consultants, to ensure strict adherence to recruitment policies. It is important that education should be freed from politics and left to professionals to manage.
Lack of professional leadership in the Federal and State Ministries of Education is a major problem in the education industry. The various Ministries of Education in Nigeria can be likened to the Ministries of Health where you have medical professionals such as Pharmacists, Nurses, Obstericians, Gyaenacologists, Surgeons, Dentists, etc.but unlike the Ministries of Health, the Ministries of Education at both the federal and state levels lack professionals in various aspects of education. It is therefore important for the Ministries of Education to be made up of professionals especially people with teaching qualifications, who, as inspectors and supervisors can provide professional leadership. Professional areas which must be covered by the Ministries of Education include Educational Management and Administration, Curriculum studies, Measurement and Evaluation,Special Education, Teacher Education, Educational Planning, etc. professionals in these areas are the caliber of people that should formulate and implement educational policies to the benefit of the Nigerian child and in the interest of the country as a whole.
There is inadequate inspection and supervision of schools because of lack of adequate and appropriate personnel in the Ministries at the federal and state levels. This has led to a situation where most schools have operated without supervision for a very long time. It is important to stress that teachers are the best supervisors and inspectors of the teaching/learning process. There should be evolved a means of bringing very experienced and competent teachers into the Ministries of Education, from time to time, to beef up their supervisory and inspectorate roles.
EXAMINATION MALPRACTICE
Examination malpractice has been a feature of Nigerian institutions of learning. Since the late seventies, this malady has gradually grown over the years and has assumed epidemic proportion today. It has become so pervasive in the country that we seem to have been caught in its web and are finding it difficult to extricate ourselves from it.
Examination malpractice destroys the quest for knowledge. The result of examination malpractice is indolence and unproductivity. Examination malpractice in our schools is being encouraged by the fact that not enough learning is taking place in the school system due largely to the poor quality of instruction received by our children. We need to reverse this trend by paying attention to the quality of teachers we produce. It is important to emphasize that teachers are the most critical factor of learning in the school system. Therefore in any system with poor teachers [such as ours], adequate learning cannot take place and students must resort to examination malpractice. It therefore follows that,to tackle the problem of examination malpractice from its roots, we need to do something to improve the teaching and learning situation in schools.
It is no longer news to read in all our newspapers about the poor performance of our children in both internal and external examinations. In all exams, it is mass failure. Nigeria can not afford these pattern of failure. The failure rate that prevail today need not be permanent. All Nigeria students deserve the best education and highly qualified teachers. Enough has been said about the poor performances of our children in school. All Talk, and No Action.
Members of the Private School Owners Association Uvwie Chapter, Delta State, are very worried and concerned about the present state of education in Nigeria. A nation without proper,functional and qualitative education at the primary and secondary levels, is a nation in danger and in decay. We have proposed to hold a conference with the them: “The Ills of Our Educational System”.The following topics would be delivered. They are:
z Quality Teachers: A Strategic Investment.
z Preparing Teachers And Principals To Succeed.
z Recruiting And Retaining High-Quality Teachers And Principals.
z Advancing The Professional Practice Of Teachers And Principals.
z Teacher Career Ladder.
z Teaching As A Calling.
z School Facilities: A Challenge For 21stCentury Schools.
z Parents As Educational Partners.
z Fostering Quality Teaching And High Levels Of Student Learning In All Nigeria Schools.
z Harnessing The Power Of Technology For Recruiting High-Quality Teachers And Principals For Our Schools.
z Development And Implementation Of Nationwide Standards For Professional Practice Of Nigeria’s Teachers And Principals.
z Framework For Reviewing, Evaluating And Accrediting Teachers And
principals.
z Attractive Model For Strengthening Teacher Preparation Programme.
We need to address this issue with courage and with honesty, and we need to do it in a way that allows us to build teachers’ capacity to perform – and to help students succeed. At the end of the proposed conference, our recommendations would be forwarded to President Jonathan.
As Private School owners, we share a commitment to significantly improve Nigeria’s schools. So that all students in the country would have the opportunity for a first-rate education.
Proprietress,Chinkelly Schools, Ekpan – Effurun, Delta State.
17th April, 2012.
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